Sight unseen it would be impossible for me to resist a
movie with a title calling itself ‘Geisha Assassin’.
Simply not possible. Even if they had retained the
original of title of ‘Geisha Vs. Ninja’ I would still be
unable to avoid it. But with a title such as ‘Geisha
Assassin’ and being somewhat unaware what this movie was
about before settling down to watch it, I was thinking I
was going to get one of those extremely suspect Japanese
exploitation flicks in the tradition of the Zero Woman
series or one those terrible excuses for Japanese
exploitation such as the movie ‘Cool
Dimension’ or the awful ‘Ninja Vixen’ series.
Hardly. No my friends what we have here with ‘Geisha
Assassin’ is a hard core full blown martial arts action
film. And that’s pretty much it. If ever there was a
movie that is single-minded of focus, ‘Geisha Assassin’
would be that movie.

When we first meet the lady Kotono (Minami Tsukui) she
is doing her Geisha dance during what I’m guessing is
the feudal Japan time period. Now I’m certainly no
geisha expert but she really doesn’t seem to be all that
good at it. But what the hell do I know? After her
performance Kotono goes for a stroll in the late night
air with her wigasa in hand. However our cute geisha
isn’t just wandering aimlessly, no sir, she is looking
for someone and she has found this someone in the
Samurai Hyo-e (Shuntaro Ito). It would appear that this
Samurai killed Kotono’s father some years back and the
girl has come a calling with revenge on her mind. Can’t
get much simpler than that.

Though he’s not afraid of the girl, the Samurai isn’t
all that interested in fighting her either, mainly
because he has determined that her skills aren’t up to
snuff, so he has a couple of his lower ranked underlings
deal with woman as he walks off on his merry way. Well
her skills might not be up to par with the Samurai Hyo-e
but they are more than enough to dispatch with these
clowns, and with said clowns dispatched with extreme
prejudice Kotono continues her quest for revenge.

From this point ‘Geisha Assassin’ turns into something
along the lines of ‘Soul Calibur’ or ‘Dead or Alive’
because before Kotono can finally reach her ultimate
goal of fighting this Samurai she believes killed her
father, she has to first defeat a number of foes, each
increasing in difficulty, which range from flying ninjas
to super strong monks to mystical zombies with
detachable heads, and don’t let us forget her spirited
battle with Sacagawea. I guess. Kotono would rather not
fight these people who keep getting in her way, though
she is curious why they keep getting in her way when
none of this concerns them. Or so she believes.

But considering that this is essentially a live-action
video game it is all about the Final Boss Battle, but
all isn’t quite what it seems. What secrets does this
Samurai hold about the death of Kotono’s father and does
the lady Kotono even care what he has to say as the
years of hate and a desire for vengeance have completely
eaten away at her very soul.

There really isn’t much to say about ‘Geisha Assassin’
though that’s never stopped me from incessantly droning
on before. The movie runs at a scant seventy five
minutes with about sixty to sixty five of those minutes
either dedicated to the fight scenes, walking to the
fight scenes or posing after the fight scenes. Thus this
is going to leave us with about fifteen minutes to
squeeze in some semblance of a narrative which director
Go Ohara intersperses throughout his movie mostly
through flashback. If you’ve ever played and enjoyed a
fighting videogame, you won’t find this particular
approach all that foreign or all that difficult to get
behind, because fighting games are notorious for having
the sketchiest stories which only serve the purpose of
bridging the beat downs, and the narrative in ‘Geisha
Assassin’ is pretty much just like that.

Since the movie is 85 percent fight scenes, our hope is
that they are at least decent fight scenes and
thankfully the majority of them are pretty damn good. I
don’t know how much of the sword fighting that actress
Minami Tsukui was actually performing herself, but Ohara
did a great job in at least making it look like she was
doing all of the sword work. Despite the fact that it’s
pretty clear that this movie was shot on a small budget
the sword battles were very well done and exciting to
watch, and Ohara even employed a little wire work in his
film, and you know we’re a sucker for Asians flying
through the forest and over rooftops. The hand to hand
combat scenes didn’t fare as well with the director
attempting to mask some of the deficiencies he was
working with, considering the over usage of slow motion,
which really only served the purpose of slowing
everything down to the point where one could point out
the problems with some of the accuracy with the fight
scenes.

Whether or not you will enjoy ‘Geisha Assassin’
probably depends on whether or not you like martial arts
flicks, fighting video games and don’t mind a story that
is about as deep as a children’s wading pool. As it so
turns out I like Martial Arts flicks, fighting video
games and not having to think too hard so ‘Geisha
Assassin’ gets a hearty recommendation from me.